


please stay on hold

by bipolyjack



Series: Blood Runs Cold [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, M/M, hands in the air if u subscribe to the school of garrus being in love with mshep in me1, shep's li hearing them die on the comm is a fairly widely accepted piece of headcanon is it not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 17:49:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17430626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bipolyjack/pseuds/bipolyjack
Summary: Who bears the burden of the witness?





	please stay on hold

"Where is he?" Garrus demanded as soon as Kaidan swung into the escape pod.

"He went back for Joker," Kaidan said, helping a few other crewmembers climb into the pod after him. "Ordered me to leave without him."

Garrus shook his head. "No. We go when he gets here and not before!"

“He gave me an order!" Kaidan's voice was rough, almost trembling through his helmet mic. Garrus knew how the major felt about Shepard - not like it was any big secret - but he couldn't imagine having such a strong sense of the chain of command that you'd leave the man you loved behind on a dying ship. Maybe that made him a bad turian. But this was Shepard they were talking about.

"The Normandy's breaking up," Dr. Chakwas gritted out, one hand pressed to a fractured rib. "If we don't go now, none of us are going to make it. Shepard will find a way."

Garrus shook his head again, helplessly. No.

Kaidan smashed his fist down on the eject switch. Garrus felt the jolt of the doors slamming shut like a physical blow, sickening and visceral. He had to clench his fists against his thighs to stop himself from making a lunge for the door, or maybe at Kaidan, but then the pod jettisoned and he was slammed back into his seat, his helmet absorbing the impact.

His helmet speakers crackled to life. _"Joker, get in! That's an order!"_

_He's all right - he's all right._

The sound of a pod's thrusters firing, and then sudden silence, punctured by Shepard's slow breaths of recycled envirosuit air. Could everyone in the pod hear this? Could Kaidan hear it? Shepard's breathing hitched and sped for a few drawn-out moments, calmed again. Then there was the unmistakable hiss of escaping air. The slow, measured breathing turned into panicked panting.

Across the pod, Kaidan ripped off his helmet and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders were noticeably shaking under his hardsuit.

Garrus clenched his fists against his thighs, watching Kaidan fall apart as Shepard's gasps became strained and erratic, breaking into one airless sob before wheezing back into silence. Not even the hiss of depressurization now. Garrus knew he should turn off his helmet comm, that there was and there would be nothing more to hear, but he was locked into place, arms too heavy to lift as the connection fuzzed out on Shepard's end and cut to static.

Horror came over him as he realized he was feeling superior to Kaidan for having the guts to keep listening, to at least honor Shepard by hearing his last moments. _His – fuck, his last -_ He couldn’t have gone out that easily. So simple, a snuffed flame in a vacuum. _Impossible. Not Commander Shepard._ But he'd heard it. He'd heard the whole thing, and Kaidan, who claimed to love him, had not.

Kaidan was looking up at Garrus now, with red-rimmed eyes, hunched forward in his harness. His cheeks and brow were sheened with damp in the low blue emergency lights.

Garrus shook his head, once, barely turning his neck because even that tiny movement felt like an insurmountable effort.

Kaidan stared for another long moment, and then his face crumpled and he lowered his gaze again. Chakwas glanced up from the woman whose burns she was tending and laid a gentle but firm hand on Kaidan's knee. Her face was pained, but she went back to work on the injured crew-woman without comment.

Garrus wondered if he'd ever be ready to talk about what he'd heard. Whether he would always be able to recall, in excruciating detail, that one desperate sob underlaid by the air hissing out of Shepard's ruptured suit. He knew his hands would be shaking if he let them, so he kept them clenched tightly into fists, long after an Alliance vessel had answered the distress signal and brought their pod aboard, long after he'd been stripped out of his armor and checked for injuries, long after he'd been set up in temporary quarters, in a stranger's bed, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

At some point in the night cycle he must have fallen asleep somehow because he woke up from a ruthlessly vivid dream in which he not only heard but saw Shepard die, his body jackknifing wildly, trying to get the air hose at the back of his neck reattached to his helmet while the remains of the Normandy broke apart behind him. He woke up shouting and thrashing in the unfamiliar bunk, while people he didn't know hissed at him to shut up. He rolled over on his side, tried to control his panting breaths, laid there trembling silently until someone came and told him to get up, that they'd be docking at the Citadel in a few minutes and there would most likely be a lot of questions to answer.

The someone was Chakwas, and he knew she was only trying to look out for him, which was why he felt so guilty when he finally made it out of the bureaucratic soup of the Citadel, settled into the shadowy back alleys on Omega, and stopped answering her calls. He told himself it was because his new line of work required anonymity. He didn't answer Tali or Liara's calls either, and eventually they stopped trying.

Kaidan never called, and Garrus was glad. He wanted to talk to him even less than the others. What would he say? _If you loved him, why didn't you bring him back? Why did you leave me to witness his death alone, you coward?_

It was probably better that he didn't call.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about this. Fic and series title from M4 Part II by Faunts (from the Mass Effect 1 soundtrack).


End file.
